News In Brief

December 30, 1983

Soviet Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko plans to attend the disarmament conference in Stockholm next month, and it is ''highly probable'' he will meet there with Secretary of State George Shultz, Western diplomatic sources said Thursday.

The Soviet Union, which has suspended nuclear-arms and troop-reduction talks with the West, has so far refused to state its intentions about the conference. But the sources said Moscow had now given firm indications that Gromyko would attend and that a formal announcement could be expected soon.

Meanwhile the Soviet parliament endorsed President Yuri Andropov's criticism of the West for deploying new nuclear missiles, but the session ended without the major foreign policy statement expected by many diplomats. The two-day session of the Supreme Soviet had been thought a likely forum for sharp condemnation of Western arms policies.